It then developed into whether Historical Materialism was or was not a science, and from there I put forward the Science of Logic as the negelected key for which brings coherence to Historical Materialism and an argument that would place it amongst the sciences legitamately.
Fine that you disagree with all this, but look at the position you end up with - Marxism remains a set of recipes (unconnected) and becomes just a field of exploration where a thousand independant theories bloom, science a social process is virtually restricted to professionals and one philosophy becomes just as good as another.
As the position you are voicing is the very position I was first criticising things seem to have gone full circle.
I am not an academic, my interest in these things is a matter of finding what works and what does not - I have no great knowledge nor pretend to on comparative philosophy, but rather came to philosophy in order to solve particular problems in Marxism. The most solid problem was a relatively simple one, what is the dialectic and what is its role in Historical Materialism?
The question lead to Hegel to Kant and back to Hegel again then back through Marx where it begun. I can argue why Hegel answers Kant and how Marx answers Hegel and gives shape to Historical Materialism, what I cannot do is make comparisons between this and that philosophy which are meaningful, I have passed through a number of Philosophers but cannot make any substantial link between them and my major inteserst so I have brushed those few aside (Russel, Satre, etc).
For me the onological nature of science is almost a given, as the ontological nature of Historical Materialism is criticial to understanding it (which you disagree with). I believe that the same principals are applicable to the other sciences and find it more useful to see them as such (that is I find that it explains aspects of science that would otherwise be hidden or neglected).
Now all this gives you more then enough ammunition to condemn me as some-kind of Hegel cultist, in fact, going on a post sent after this one - this is already your opinion. OK again fine, I can live with this, but what are your solutions? In this I find from what you have said the question cannont really be posed as in a sense you seem to be saying everything is alright with Marxism as it is except for those you disagree with. It is a position which gives you a free hand and such liberty of mind can be healthy.
I cannot help but think that such intellectual freedom does make it particularly hard for me to reply. So far the single position you have offered has been that science is a social practice and while I'll concede a lot can be said on this topic and it can be far more elaborate than this simple sentence, I still scratch my head as to what, if anything, this gives us (In have read this argument before and then came to the conclusion that it was non-answer more designed to diospense with the question then anything else).
Now as the thread has gone, I have attempted to put a position (whatever its faults and they are sure to be many), and then seem to be being dismised because I have - the world viewed mypoically through Hegelian specticles would seem to be the most cogent arguement againt what I have said, which of course can be carried out by reaching for any type of argument from any source so-long as it is not Hegel. Now forgive me but it seems that your position is defined by anti-hegelianism rather than a positive position following some distinct line of reason.
Ian, though I have to leave for a week in a few hours I would like to resume this thread with you on my return if that is alright. Above is my challenge, that is put forward your own view on science and Marxism and I will criticise that for a bit - afterwards we may find some common ground for at the moment we appear to have very little.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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--- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <seamus2001 at attbi.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 22:54:52 -0800 Subject: Re: Marxism and "Science" (Was: Comic Book Marxism)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au>
> IAN:"I know it isn't which is precisely why Hegel should have called
it
> something else."
>
> EEK! Big misunderstanding here, not an uncommon one but a biggy
none-the-less. Yes you can accept formal Logic as the definition of
Logic, and this is mathmatical, but it is also faulted and based on
fairly primitive assumptions (much like Artificial Intellegience in
the computer world). You can do a few good tricks with Formal Logic,
but it fails to at a very basic level of showing what Reason is when
it is being logical (that is when it is being correct). Formal Logic
is just a number of rules which goes under the name of Logic.
==============
I fail to understand how formal logic fails us. Simple axioms can lead to staggeringly complex results; that's one of logic's many virtues. We may fail to be logical--too often it seems when it's especially worthwhile-- but logic does not fail us when employed to achieve desirable 'ends'. Desire, of course, being another issue entirely. I would hold with Justin, and many others, that Hegel's L is an attempt at ontology, specifically, the merger of Parmenides, Heraclitus and Aristotle -and to a lesser extent, again, Chinese and Indian ideas- in order to create the possibility of a theodicy given the Christian social context Hegel lived within.
>
> Hegel's Science of Logic had quite a different purpose then
outlining rules which if followed lead to "logical" formulations. His
approach was thought turned in-on-itself - that is thought
comprehending thinking not as a physical thing, but as thoughts. In
reality he was demonstrating the interrelationships between the most
general and abstract concepts, ie which depended on what (the
necessary assumptions behind each major aspect). His book demonstrates
this dependency by drawing one after another of these concepts from
within the primary concept of becoming (as against being and
nothingness - his first chapter shows how neither of these concepts
are sufficient but that "becoming" limits and defines both).
=============
Well, connnections between concepts, predications and the like are either logical or non-logical, right? As such, shouldn't Hegel's assertions concerning thought and 'it's' self-referentiality be logically coherent? A momentous task to be sure, and one humans are continually perplexed by; as I wrote in a paper critiquing H. a few years ago, for H. knowing=being but he never made the link to learning=becoming, something people like Piaget and Bateson and some who explored evolutionary epistemology in the '80's tried to do. I also annoyed one of my profs. who was a pretty big H. fan that Darwin's quip about metaphysics, baboons and Locke applied equally well to H. and dialectics.
> However, I must defend Hegel - he is not really more difficult then
the subject matter demands, it is simply difficult stuff he is taking
on.
> A thing looks distinct (doesn't matter what it is) "A", it appears
distinct relative to some other thing (this can be a group of all
other things or just somethings which are similar) "B". This is "A is
not B" distinction, "B" representing all that is not "A" - ie its
non-being (hence its limit or determination). Here's a
contradiction - the thing that determines (limits) what "A" is is not
something belonging to "A" at all, but belongs to "B", but just as "B"
limits what "A" is, "A" also limits what "B" is. The distinct part of
what is limited in "B" are those parts which are the opposite to "A"
(ie what it is not).
================
Ok now we're getting somewhere towards a calculus of distinctions, descriptions and indications and boundary formations at the simplest logical level. On this score, I hold that H. was not as good as Leibniz or Kant, the latter two being far more well versed in math and geometry.
> If memory serves me correctly this is all part of Hegel's
demonstration that the concepts of Being and Nothingness are not
sufficient in themsleves for Logic to develop. As one limits and
defines the other, specifically pointing to another "something" in
which this reliant opposition resides. The thing it has also got, the
thing which is part and parcel of its being - is its non-being. Ie it
is not just a contradiction of formal logical kind (a paradox) but a
moving contradiction buried within the concept of Being (or for that
matter Nothingness - or "A " and "B" or "something" as against
"other").
=====================
Ok as far as the first assertion is concerned, what could count against it? Is logic prior to and constitutive of B & N? What would Buddha and Nagarjuna say about that?
> What he is showing is rather than a static relationship between
things, there is a moving relationship (again we are not talking about
things themselves, but the concept of a something). A simple assertion
of a something being, hides within it the concept of it not-being -
again if memory serves this all ends up showing that lying below these
concepts is another which Hegel terms "Becoming". Things don't just
exist within the mind (like a digital database), they "become", they
are not static categories but associated creations.
===========
Ok, so he's searching for a cognitive dynamics that maps onto the dynamics of actual entities? Or perhaps given that many see H as an idealist, he's trying to explicate the consitutive conditions of consciousness that bring forth entitification via thought. If the dynamical properties of entity X *become* independently of consciousness - realism - then H's system can't work.
>
> Hegel packs a lot into a paragraph, what is remarkable is that the
paracgraphs in each chapter spiral back to the one question Hegel is
posing, eloborating a concept but always maintaining its relationship
with the whole enterprise.
>
> "244
>
> [b] Now in so far as something in its limit both is and is not, and
> these moments are an immediate, qualitative difference, the negative
> determinate being and the determinate being of the something fall
> outside each other. Something has its determinate being outside (or,
> as it is also put, on the inside) of its limit; similarly, the
other,
> too, because it is a something, is outside it. Limit is the middle
> between the two of them in which they cease. They have their
> determinate being beyond each other and beyond their limit; the
limit
> as the non-being of each is the other of both."
>
> Now Hegel twists the notion of distinction and looks at definition
itself (leaving aside the things and examining the defining moment).
Between a comparison there is the limit itself (the point at where the
comparison is made) but at this point which is beyond both something
peculiar happens to "A" and "B" - they both dissolve.
==============
Oh, the self-referentiality of defining definitions *de-finiting* which is not *in-finiting*. You should take a look at G. Spencer Brown's "The Laws of Form."
>
> A simple example is comparing red to green apples ("A" and "B")
their general appleness is not at issue but the colour is (most apples
are red but some are green), colour defines their contradiction,
colour is nieither red nor green, nor is it the qualitative difference
that belongs to either - the concept exists regardless of any apple
and they share this as something not of themselves.
=================
No, color is a matter of physics, the neurophysiology of perception and the sociology of naming natural kinds. Color has no color as Gregory Bateson was fond of saying.
> Now this is just a truism (ie holds in any logical comparison) but
Hegel is doing more than this, specifically he is working towards the
particular notion which holds together two critical important
philosophical abstracts. He is not just there being clever, rather he
id delving into a single concept from which he will pull out the
relationships of many others (quality and quanatity, identity,
opposition, negation and all the rest).
>
> Moreover, he will pull out these concepts using exactly the same
method and get the appropriate answers each time - but he does not ask
the reader to take any of this on trust - he shows what he is doing
and how he is doing it - that is where the thing gets really mind
blowing - it is not just proofs in the normal philosophical sense - he
is demonstrating what proof is (ie the Logic on which all reason
rests).
=============
I'll take Euler, Gauss, Hilbert and Godel on ideas of what constitutes proof.
> Ian all this that I have said is probably clumsy and off-beam. My
purpose was not to unravel Hegel's tortorous prose and demonstrate
that he is not that hard to understand, but rather to show that my
inedpt summation does no justice to what he is actually doing which is
really something quite extraordinary and amazingly thorough. Thought
thinking about thought, is not creating some articifical Logic (a
comparatively easy task) or giving a philosophy of thought - he is
actually showing its inner associations and relationships and not
letting any escape in grand jesture - everything is minutely turned
over, and the over and over - he makes Kant look like a schoolboy -
once you get a grip of what he is actually achieving the effect is
awesome (hence my frequent brain burn-outs and returns for another
dose).
=================
So you're saying H had more intimate knowledge about thought thinking itself than, say Kant, or Husserl or Godel or Hypatia or Sylvia Plath?
> Hegel in his preface is very specific, his purpose was to understand
(philosophically) what we do when we reason, in a sense he is showing
us what reason is.
============
A completely unfinished task, imo. :-)
> Now if all of this seems too much bother for too little profit -
then I suggest Tony Smith's book on Marx's Capital and Hegel's Logic
(I don't have the actual title) is a good shake-up for he shows, and I
don't know of anyone else who has so done, that Marx shapes Capital
according to Hegel's logic. It is has some importance even based on
this alone. Furthermore if the dialectics that Marx referred so often
to lie anywhere in a fully elaborated fashion they lie within Hegel's
Science of Logic. Cage what you will from Marx on this score, or
Engels well meant note book The Dialectics of Nature, but nothing
compares to the original.
>
> The problem we face is not something Marx could have anticipated,
that Hegel who dominated serious philosophy during most of Marx's
lifetime was pushed aside just as Marx became the best known and most
widely read revolutionary (towards the end of his life) I suspect that
Engels attempt to repopularise Hegel via his Dialetics of Nature
(which never reached publishable form) was a direct response to this
move way from Hegel in philosophical development - Lenin certianly
until 1914 only understood a very basic and caged version of
dialectics, but look what happened to him after reading it (his most
important works all flowed from this period and have Hegel's
fingermarks all over them - Imperialism, State and Revolution, the
April Thesis etc).
>
> The single reason why Hegel has got such a bad press, probably has
little to do with his associations with Marx and revolution, at the
heart of it is that he made such gigantic strides that much of the
rest of philosophy looks very primitive, niave and wrong headed.
Marx's critique of Hegel did stand him right way up and certainly much
of his philosophical works which lead to the Logic and some which
flowed afterwards Marx did not hestitate to demolish - but the Logic
itself was left untouched as the centerpiece, in fact it was the means
by which Marx criticised Hegel's other works (the spiral returning
back onto itself but at a higher level).
>
> As this is a overlong response I will let it stand as it is without
addressing your other points many of which have merit, though
obviously there is much grounds for disagreement.
>
>
> Greg Schofield
> Perth Australia
> g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au
================
Does A. N. Whitehead or Annette Baier or Wilfred Sellars or Hannah Arendt or Willard Quine or D. T. Suzuki really look primitive compared to H.? I don't think so...........
Cheers,
Ian